Saving Academic Freedom From Its Supporters

Scholars have for centuries sought
to define and promote the concept of academic freedom, and, while the exact
definitions they’ve arrived at have varied, the underlying rationale has always
been the same: to shield academics from political and religious pressure. For
this reason, I’m a bit puzzled by the fact that many of the modern-day groups that
describe themselves as defenders of academic freedom are also clearly political
in nature and often seem to be promoting a political agenda rather than
neutral principles of liberty.

The most recent academic freedom
movement within the academy, which calls itself “The Ad Hoc Committee to Defend
the University,”
seems to fit this mold. It eloquently extols the virtues of academic
freedom, particularly in debates over the Middle East, but upon closer
inspection, seems concerned only with the rights of scholars
from one side – theirs, of course – ofthe
political spectrum.

The Committee, led Joan Wallach
Scott, a history professor at Princeton, has already voiced its opinion on
quite a few academic freedom controversies, and, so far, they’ve always come
out pretty much on the right side, in my view. When St.
Thomas University
cancelled a speech by critic of Israel
and Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, members of the Committee rallied
behind the censored clergyman. And when the pro-Israel group StandWithUs
convinced the University of Michigan press to stop publishing a book called Overcoming Zionism, the Committee helped
convince Michigan to change its mind, arguing persuasively against these
“efforts to broaden definitions of anti-Semitism to include scholarship and
teaching that is critical of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and of
Israel.”

So what’s the problem, then? As you
can see, all of these controversies involve censorship of anti-Israel speakers.
In order for me to take this group seriously, it first needs to defend the
academic freedom of someone whose speech doesn’t fit neatly into the limited
range of politically acceptable (or, as some prefer to say, politically
correct) viewpoints prevalent on most campuses. The Committee stood behind Tutu,
a liberal darling, but where was it when the Regents of the University of California
nixed a speaking invitation to former Harvard University
president and Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers because of complaints
from a handful of leftist postmodernist professors?
Similarly, the Committee criticized Israel
supporters Alan Dershowitz and David Horowitz for involving themselves in DePaul University’s
tenure dispute with Jewish-born Israel-basher Norman Finkelstein, but why
hasn’t it also criticized the leftist academics who aggressively sought to bar
Arab-born Israel-supporter Nonie Darwish from speaking at Brown last year? (Disclosure: I’m a long-time personal
friend of Dershowitz. This said, however, I’ve been publicly critical of a
number of his positions.)

As I’ve said many times, and will
say again, once we cease looking at free speech and academic freedom as modal
liberties – that is, as primary values in and of themselves – and begin to
treat them as a means to a politicized or ideological end, we irreparably
weaken thm in the long run. Either free speech and academic
freedom are seamless and equally applied across the ideological spectrum, or
they might as well be abandoned entirely. The founders of these important
doctrines understood this. It’s a shame that their modern-day counterparts need
so oftento be reminded of it.

(My thanks go to my research
assistant, the very talented Jan Wolfe,
for assisting me with this blog entry.)